Management systems, such as those used in information technology (IT) operations, can track various instances in part by storing information about those instances. Instances may be hardware such as a computer or network device, software such as an operating system or user application, incidents, change orders, work tickets, or various other entities tracked within the management system.
Information stored by the management system regarding the tracked instances may include relationships between instances. For example, a peripheral may have a relationship to a computer that it is part of or connected to. Similarly, an operating system, or other software, may be related to a computer by being installed on that computer. A work ticket may be related to a network router because the work ticket suggests replacing the router.
Information stored by management systems is generally stored within a database. It is desirable to retrieve information about instances from the database based on relationships between the instances and various other instances. For example, a system manager may wish to retrieve information regarding the operating system installed on computers that are related to a certain type of network device and also related to an incident. Such retrieval generally requires making multiple queries, processing and comparing the results, and establishing the desired output according to the relationships retrieved from the database queries.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.